The Answer is 42 – Page 5

To recover from the spectacularly bad writing of Chetan Bhagat, I went back to reading Douglas Adams’s Salmon of Doubt. Once again. By now I have lost count of the number of times I have read DNA’s works. My only regret so far is I that I could never read through his book Last Chance To See – also what he has often said is his most favourite work out of all the ones that he has written. I’m pathologically incapable of appreciating flora and fauna unless there’s accompany dialogue with colourful words. By that I mean a select few Tintin comics of course. All this environmental crap brings images of unwashed hippies to my mind (and more often that not they do fit that description). Douglas Adams is an honourable exception of course, despite the fact that he (partly) climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit that smelled of sweat and Dettol (his words, not mine).

But I digress. American publishers have this curious fascination tagging on subtitles to any and every book to entice readers; probably, they’d have wanted to stick tearaway brochures with scantily clad women praising the book but then that might cost too much. The tagline for Salmon of Doubt is Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, which contributes to the eerie sense of finality: “This is it. This is the last Douglas Adams work ever to published”.

At various points of time, Salmon of Doubt was supposed to be a Dirk Gently novel, a Hitchhiker’s novel, and then a standalone novel but on similar lines to the previous two series’. He was notorious with his publisher for he “loved deadlines, and the whooshing sound they made as they went by”. Tragically, Douglas Adams reached the dead-line in his life way too early than anyone who knew him wanted. And with that, so did the hopes of further gems from this brilliant man.

Soon after his, work started on releasing the Salmon of Doubt even in the unfinished state it was in. This book contains eleven chapters of that unfinished novel, which in the current working stage was a Dirk Gently novel – but DNA stated in interviews that he wanted to use the ideas in the novel for something else. Documents salvaged from his computer were stitched together to make these eleven chapters. Varied ‘versions’ were edited together by Peter Guzzardi, an editor who had worked with DNA.

The rest of the book consists of various speeches, newspaper / magazine articles, interviews, website postings, et al that Douglas made in the years leading up to his death. The book is divided into three sections – Life, containing some short snippets on his thoughts on the world around him; the Universe, a section almost completely devoted to his writings on technology and religion; and Everything, the section which has the unfinished novel along with supplementary material / interviews where DNA spoke on which direction he wanted to take the novel in.

For most readers who haven’t looked beyond his works, The Salmon of Doubt is a huge revelation about what the man was like. Biographical and autobiographical anecdotes from his early life and what he really went through on his road to stardom. His well-reasoned – and totally Apple-worshipping – love for new gadgets and technology. His passionate appeals to save various endangered species. His logically thought out speeches on why religion came to be what it is, and how we should be careful about not ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water’ when trying to replace religious practices with atheism because of their practical uses.

The Salmon of Doubt is a glimpse into the world of a man who realized that common sense presented a lot of answers or potential answers to almost any sort of problem. His trademark style of humour – intellectual, witty and so many other adjectives brims in each and every article. Most of the articles included are from a time when Adams was past the h2g2 / Dirk Gently novel stage and had moved on to endless book signings and lecture tours, so it’s as if you’re getting to a know a different person while at the same time feeling as if this was your best friend in some past life.

Stephen Fry (one of Douglas Adams’s close friends), in the foreword to this book, says:

I advance this is a theory. Douglas’s work…It’s like falling in love. When an especially peachy Adams turn of phrase or epithet enters the eye and penetrates the brain you want to tap the shoulder of the nearest stranger and share it. The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug to yourself the thought that they didn’t quite understand its force and quality the way you do – just as your friends (thank heavens) don’t also fall in love with the person you are going on an on about to them.

That is precisely what DNA’s work makes most fans think like, once you come to truly appreciate them. (At least, that’s the case with me!) The simple fact that his jokes are not “Yo Mama” jokes but ones which require those little grey cells to understand and chuckle about is what makes DNA’s work special – and it is what makes the reader feel special. I already mentioned an excerpt from Douglas Adams’s first Dirk Gently book in an earlier blog post which I found especially funny. Here’s another excerpt from the same book which had me howling with laughter:

“…There are certain events in the past, I’m afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself.”
“Absolutely, I know how you feel. Most of the fourteenth century, for instance, was pretty grim,” agreed Reg earnestly.
Dirk was about to correct the misapprehension, but thought that it might be somewhat of a long trek and left it.

I’ve often actually found myself doing what Stephen Fry describes, when some particular turn of events reminds me of something that Douglas Adams wrote about such situations; I end up calling friends randomly from my phonebook. Some of them do get the joke, but not quite. After all, if you randomly called some person whom you haven’t spoken for some time, just because in some movie you saw some cop shouting “Freeze!” to a criminal, and went, “Hey! What’s up? Oh, BTW, Marvin said ‘Freeze? I’m not a refrigerator'” immediately followed by 10 minutes of non-stop laughter then I’m sure my friends have the right to feel thoroughly confused. (I know I don’t make much sense in the last sentence.)

(Note to the ones with whom this has happened: my sincerest apologies. Nah, I’m kidding. I’ve no remorse at all for what I’ve done.)

It doesn’t end with his written works. Depending on whether you are a fan or not a fan, the Hitchhiker’s movie will be the best movie ever or the worst movie ever, or if you fall in the middle ground which gets *some* of jokes then you might chuckle a bit but really not get what the big deal is about. I admit, that if hadn’t read the Hitchhiker’s books then I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the movie on its own. What’s ‘wrong’ with the movie, as many have pointed out, is that it feels as if the novel is being read out by someone rather than a movie screenplay. Whether this what DNA intended or the later scriptwriter (Karey Kirkpatrick) being overcautious after DNA’s death about not deviating too much from Hitchhiker’s is immaterial to me. All that matters is that Douglas Adams wanted every version of h2g2 to contradict the other and thus made the changes from the novels / radio series.

People allege the movie didn’t do that well in the box office; that may well be true but h2g2 fans around the globe made it a success anyway. Roger Ebert correctly called the Hitchhiker’s movie a lovesick puppy – you can either take time to take it under your wings, learn to understand it and come to love it, or you can let it be. Most people let it be. You folks are missing out on something truly magical. (Yes, I do suggest reading the h2g2 books, at least the first one, before you embark on watching the movie.) No matter what others say, I find the movie thoroughly enjoying and it has immense re-watch value, just as you can read his novels as many times as you want without ever getting bored.

A sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide novel has been commissioned by Jane Belson, Douglas Adams’s widow. DNA admitted that Mostly Harmless (the fifth and final book in the h2g2 trilogy) was a terribly bleak book and that he wanted to write another novel to end the series on an upbeat note. Taking that idea forward, this sixth and (now) final book – titled And Another Thing… will be written by Eoin Colfer, best-known for his Artemis Fowl series. (The title comes from a joke in the fourth h2g2 book.) When I first heard about this my first reaction was outrage (“How dare they think anyone can live up to Douglas Adams’s reputation! He. Was. Douglas. Adams.”) and followed by measured scepticism after I had calmed down (“I’ll give Eoin Colfer a chance, but he better not screw it up”). Turns out that Eoin Colfer went through pretty much the same emotions, and was quite apprehensive himself whether he would be able to do the job. Time will tell what happens.

So there is not an iota of doubt in my mind that when And Another Thing hits the bookstores on 11th October 2009, I will be attending Hitchcon 09 where Eoin Colfer has a book-signing session too. And any other events by ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha – the official h2g2 appreciation society. Not an iota of doubting that I will be tweeting the galaxy…

My fascination with the number 42 is notorious, legendary, hilarious, reverential, ‘huh?’ – and a bunch of other adjectives depending on whom the person you’re discussing this ‘issue’ with is. A thread on gyaan.in made me LOL at the poor souls who still don’t ‘get’ it, so I decided to write this post to give an explanation as to how all this started.

The ‘42 joke’, in the form we know it, has its origins in the DPS VK Quiz Club. You (if you’re in the Delhi school quizzing / computer symposium circuit) might be surprised to know that DPS Vasant Kunj did not have a quiz club till that year. I spoke to the then Vice Principal, Mrs Rachna Pandit, regarding this issue and she was quite enthusiastic about the idea of starting a quiz club. She had been vice principal at DPS VK a few years before that, then joined DPS Singapore as its Principal and help set-up the fledgling school, then came back and rejoined DPS Vasant Kunj; she’s currently the principal of DPS Maruti Kunj and has overseeing the task of setting it up. Anyway, point is that Mrs Rachna Pandit was a very dynamic leader and teacher who believed in encouraging extra-curricular activities in addition to academics. DPS VK Quiz Club became a reality that year. (And it’s quite satisfying to note that something which started just three years ago has already made a mark in the Delhi school quizzing circle.)

When you start a society from scratch, one of the obvious hurdles you have is to identify talented people and induct them into the club. So what I decided, along with some seniors who were into quizzing, was to conduct an intra-school written quiz to find out who were the good quizzers. We, the ‘initial’ group of people, put up posters all over school and went around class-to-class urging those interested to turn up the intra. The first stage was online, following which we called around 50-odd students for the written intra.

Now, the paper was a pretty long one – and at the end I put in as a joke ‘What is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?’ It was an obvious joke for anyone who was aware of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It wasn’t even a score question because it was put in as a joke; didn’t even expect many people to answer it. Hardly anyone got it ‘right’. Instead, there were these weird answer like ‘Buddha’s eight-fold path’ and ‘Nirvana’ and ‘Getting high on pot‘ and whatnot. I found it quite amusing, and when I announced the answers on a later date I left it as a mysterious ‘42‘ and nothing more. I eventually got around to explaining what the joke was all about to those who were inducted.

(I’m glad that that year we found quite a few dedicated and talented members. DPS Vasant Kunj went from lurking around in the peripheries of the quizzing scene to a group that today is one of the strongest competitors out there. An institution of spotting new talent, conducting regular quizzes, et al which was set up when the quiz club became an official society of the school helped immensely. More than anything it provides a platform for quizzers to get to know each and help in making teams for events.)

Code Warriors were better off, because there had been a few seniors in earlier batches who were Hitchhiker’s fans but by 2006 there weren’t many contemporary fans left. My ‘mission’ to continue to confuse people continued there, and the mystic ‘42‘ that is associated with the Code Warriors was born. In previous years, the Code Warriors used to shout ‘Kevin Baba ki jai’ when getting off the school bus before an event (Kevin Mitnick was our unofficial official mascot back then); soon, that changed to a battle-cry of “Forty Two!”. It was fun because hardly anyone understood, including any other participating teams, accompanying school teacher – anyone within earshot.

On the rare occasions when I attended classes, I worked on spreading the ‘42 joke’ in the classroom. Put on my best poker face and told a few of the studious types that ‘42‘ was the Answer, and that a scientifically proven theory demonstrated that every complex mathematical equation could be reduced to that number. To this day, I believe there are a few FIITJEE / VMC students on this planet whom I’ve convinced – seriously – that it’s the answer. They’re probably trying to explain to an exasperated professor the same ‘fact’.

The reason why it was so funny is because you can say it with a straight face and convince gullible people that it might be true, or at the very least irritate the heck out of everyone else as they try to figure out what on earth is going on. Even in the quizzing / computer symposium circuit I found that hardly anyone had read Adams or even if they had heard about the Answer somewhere, they didn’t know much about it.

I was quiz club vice president in 11th, and when I became the Code Warriors president in 12th the 42 obsession kicked into high gear. It became something of an in-joke which confused our competitors and a battle-cry which we could rally around and have a good laugh about. Like Da Vinci setting up a canvas for a Dan Brown novel we inserted references to 42 at every event we could. In quiz events, a ‘Forty Two’ was our equivalent to ‘Shivender P Singh’ that threw quizmasters off-balance quite effectively. And when time came for Code Wars 2007, the heavens burst upon with peals of Hallelujah as practically each and every event paid homage to the greatest writer that ever walked on this planet.

The thing is, the joke never dies. In every quiz I worked on – since the first ever DPS VK Quiz Club intra – I put in a reference to h2g2 in some form or the other as a joke. I did the same in Code Wars 2008. The last question in the quiz intra was “What do you get when you multiply six by nine?” – a joke which you’d easily get if you kept in mind that a) it was the last question in the quiz and was specifically announced that it won’t be marked b) if you’ve read h2g2 the joke is obvious c) goddammit dude remember who the person who has set the paper is! A lot of people whom I know hadn’t read the h2g2 series had done so after so many years of CW repeating it everywhere, so I expected everyone to get this. Just a handful of teams did! I found this quite surprising, and with teams scoring low, not getting ‘starred’ question and with quite a few teams tied at the same score I decided to factor in last question as a tie-breaker. Easily helped in eliminating a lot of teams from the running. Particularly tragic was New Era Public School’s case, because I expected Prateek Vijayavargia to write 42 – but he didn’t (he wrote 54 instead). I really felt bad for him, but it’s a little funny at the same time.

Hope that clears up those ‘doubts’ people have been asking. It’s a PJ whose cornerstone lies in the fact that 60% of those who hear it don’t know what it’s about and start coming up with funny (to us!) interpretations, and the 40% who understand the joke get pissed off hearing it so often (which is the hallmark of a good PJ). And – I’m seriously, you guys – 42 is a nice number that you can take home and show to your family, but 24 isn’t. 42 is a number people remember too, although as a time has shown many don’t.

(By the time I graduated from school, even teachers – at least the ones in the computer department – were in on the 42 PJ. And they joined in in chanting the Holy Number.)